William Greenleaf

William Greenleaf (born August 9, 1948) is an American author.

He was born in Illinois, spent most of his life in southern Arizona, and now lives in New Mexico near Santa Fe.

He is a graduate of Arizona State University and worked as a corporate strategic and financial planner before changing careers to become a novelist, freelance book editor, and creative writing instructor.

Although Greenleaf has ghostwritten novels in many genres, as well as a variety of non-fiction books, he is best known for the science fiction novels published under his own name.

His novels are traditional science fiction with the common theme of the resilience of the human spirit and the ability of ordinary people, when threatened by extraordinary circumstances, to reach into themselves for the resources necessary to survive.

For his second novel The Tartarus Incident, Greenleaf developed a complex future environment in which the Earth-based United Nations Space Administration (UNSA) oversees space exploration and colonization efforts.

Interstellar travel involves a co-ordinated series of "skips" through a physical realm known as the Kohlmann stream.

This background scenario was used for several of Greenleaf's novels.

In The Tartarus Incident, arguably Greenleaf's best-known work, an UNSA audit ship called the jack-a-dandy vanishes during a routine jump through the K-stream to a planet called Sierra.

The five accountants aboard find themselves stranded on an unfamiliar planet, with no way to communicate with their base vessel, Graywand.

Forced to hunt for a solution themselves, they are woefully unprepared for the ship's malfunctions, the planet's withering heat and the mental pressures of being stranded in an alien wilderness.

Back on Graywand, commclerk Lars Clemens tries to determine what went wrong, persevering despite the bureaucratic incompetence of his superiors.

He finally discovers that, due to a series of avoidable human errors, the jack-a-dandy has arrived on an unexplored planet known as Tartarus — another name for Hell.

Meanwhile, the crew of the jack-a-dandy face more bad news.

Wandering from the ship, one of them has discovered an abandoned alien city and has disappeared into the catacombs beneath it.

Realizing that he has taken with him an essential part of the ship's drive, the other crew members are forced to venture into the elaborate tomb in pursuit.

Lost in the pitch-dark maze of the tomb, the crew is hunted by terrifying creatures — mindless, cannibalistic descendants of the original builders of the city.

Two crew members die in the panicked hours that follow, while a third sacrifices himself to spare the others just minutes before help arrives from UNSA.

The 1984 novel The Pandora Stone is a complex novel involving a mysterious alien artifact and a powerful group of individuals who are determined to acquire it at all costs.

The story begins when the contract courier Arlo Field is assigned to acquire and transport a mysterious alien artifact to UNSA headquarters on the planet Sierra.

Two hundred years ago, the artifact, a large crystal, was hidden on an undeveloped Fringe planet and UNSA wants to find out why.

Soon, Field learns that Isterbrandt, a powerful criminal organization, is also desperate to obtain the crystal.

If Isterbrandt succeeds, it will be able to control all of humanspace.

After he obtains the crystal, Field quickly finds himself under attack by corrupt UNSA guardsmen.

He is aided by a young woman from Earth who claims that the alien artifact belongs to her.

The two escape to Earth, which was abandoned centuries ago after a plague killed millions.

Now, only a small population remains, known as the Sgor na Lyurr.

The plague has left them with certain unique qualities, including a kind of telepathic link called the "pallaise".

The Sgor na Lyurr explain that the crystal came from the Nninjinti, an intelligent race who visited Earth long ago.

Through a mechanism hidden on Earth, the Nninjinti opened up the K-stream, the pathway along which humans travel through space.

If the Nninjinti crystal can be united with the mechanism, the story goes, the Nninjinti will return and grant humans access to the rest of the galaxy.

However, the Sgor na Lyurr suspect that the Nninjinti may have ulterior motives.

Their strange symbiotic relationship with humans' longtime adversaries — a terrifying alien race known as the "cobra" — suggests that the Nninjinti may intend to enslave humanity in the same way.

During a climactic confrontation with Isterbrandt forces, Field destroys the mechanism and the crystal, and possibly the Nninjinti themselves.

He is aided by a lone cobra who has come to Earth to save its species from extinction.

Although the destruction of the mechanism should have closed the K-stream and ended human space travel, they are surprised to find that it and the pallaise are one and the same.

As a result, the K-stream is kept open, and the cobra have a chance at survival and peace with humanity.

An underlying positive theme of Greenleaf's novels encompasses the ability of ordinary people, when faced with adversity, to reach inside themselves for the resources necessary to overcome it.

This theme is an underlying element in Starjacked!, which explores the resilience and inner strength of children.

In Starjacked!, the reporter Leo Blannon and his streamer pilot, Erek Speros, follow a tip and discover the location of Copernicus, an UNSA starship hijacked by a rogue UNSA Guard captain and a band of Fringe outlaws.